Oldest Alphabet is Hebrew?

The world’s earliest alphabet, inscribed on stone slabs at several Egyptian sites, was an early form of Hebrew, a controversial new analysis concludes.  Israelites living in Egypt transformed that civilization’s hieroglyphics into Hebrew 1.0 more than 3,800 years ago, at a time when the Old Testament describes Jews living in Egypt, says archaeologist and epigrapher Douglas Petrovich of Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Canada. Hebrew speakers seeking a way to communicate in writing with other Egyptian Jews simplified the pharaohs’ complex hieroglyphic writing system into 22 alphabetic letters, Petrovich proposed on November 17 at the annual meeting of the American Schools of Oriental Research.

 

Several biblical figures turn up in the translated inscriptions, including Joseph, who was sold into slavery by his half-brothers and then became a powerful political figure in Egypt, Joseph’s wife Asenath and Joseph’s son Manasseh, a leading figure in a turquoise-mining business that involved yearly trips to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. Moses, who led the Israelites out of Egypt, is also mentioned, Petrovich says.

Read more here. . .

Of course, not much needs to be said.  Suffice it that the standard position of science has been that writing is not very old and therefore the claims of Scripture are not credible.  As Dr. Paul Maier often reminds us, archeology is a friend to the Scriptures and to its timeline.  What could not possibly be true is what turns out to be the evidence of antiquity.  Scripture is reliable.  Christianity is credible.  Truth endures and will triumph over postulated opinion that passes as science.  Just give it time.  Thankfully, we live at a time when some of the smug presuppositions of an earlier era are being undone not by argument but by physical evidence.  What a day for Christianity!!